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eceipt for the dues that Velutha paid.
Vellya Paapen had no idea that Kari Saipu it was who
captured dreams and re-dreamed them. That he plucked them from
the minds of passersby the way children pick currants from a cake.
That the ones he craved most of all, the dreams he loved
re-dreaming, were the tender dreams of two-egg, twins.
Poor old Vellya Paapen, had he known then that History
would choose him for its deputy, that it would be his tears that set
the Terror rolling, perhaps he would not have strutted like a young
cockerel in the. Ayemenem bazaar, bragging of how he swam the
river with his sickle in his mouth (sour, the taste of iron on his
tongue). How he put it down for just one moment while he kneeled
to wash the river-grit out of his mortgaged eye (there was grit in
the river sometimes, particularly in the rainy months) when he
caught the first whiff of cigar smoke. How he picked up his sickle,
whirled around and sickled the smell that fixed the ghost forever.
All in a single fluid, athletic motion.
By the time he understood his part in History‟s Plans, it was
too late to retrace his steps. He had swept his footprints away
himself. Crawling backwards with a broom.
In the factory the silence swooped down once more and
tightened around the twins. But this time it was a different kind of
silence. An old river silence. The silence of Fisher People and
waxy mermaids.
“But Communists don‟t believe in ghosts,” Estha said, as
though they were continuing a discourse investigating solutions to
the ghost problem. Their conversations surfaced and dipped like
mountain streams. Sometimes audible to other people. Sometimes
not.
“Are we going to become a Communist2” Rahel asked.
“Might have to.”
Estha-the-Practical.
Distant cake-crumbled voices and approaching Blue Army
footsteps caused the Comrades to seal the secret.
It was pickled, sealed and put away. A red,